Gold medalist AlexBilodeau of Canada celebrates with his brother Frederic after the flower ceremony for the Men’s Moguls Finals on day three of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park on Feb. 10, 2014. (Cameron Spencer, Getty Images)

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — After winning his second Olympic gold medal late Monday, Canada’s Alex Bilodeau embraced his brother Frederic, who was possibly the most enthusiastic spectator among the rowdy, amply maple-leafed Canadians supporting the country’s skiers at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park.

Bilodeau credited the win — just as he did his gold medal in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics — to his brother, who has cerebral palsy.

Sage Kotsenburg of Park City threw a trick he’d never done before to win the first-ever Olympic slopestyle contest at the Sochi Winter Olympics on Saturday. Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

KRASNAYA POLYANA, RUSSIA – Slopestyle snowboarding’s Olympic debut saw an emphasis on style over technical trickery as Park City’s Sage Kotsenburg took home the discipline’s first-ever gold and the first medal of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Team USA’s first medal of the Games was earned with complex grabs and a first-ever 1,620-degree spinning trick by Kotsenburg, whose casual, fun-loving form harkens to snowboarding’s roots.

“I just kind of do random stuff all the time. I don’t really make a plan up. I didn’t even know I was going to do a 1620 in my run until three minutes before I dropped,” said the wild-haired 20-year-old.

Outside of a win last month in U.S. Snowboarding’s fifth and final Olympic qualifier at Mammoth Mountain, Kotsenburg hasn’t climbed to the top of a snowboarding podium since he was 11 years old.

The Olympic Rosa Khutor Extreme Park’s halfpipe venue and moguls course, right, will land on NBC primetime with the network betting big on the younger, newer events of the winter Games.

The Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, a vast venue sprawled across the Aibga Ridge at a ski area renowned for its expert terrain, will be a busy place for the next 18 days. The area will dole out 18 gold medals over the Winter Olympics, seven in new and youthful Olympic disciplines. And most all those Rosa Khutor events will splash across NBC primetime.

It’s not just the celebrated Shaun White in the halfpipe either. NBC will cover all the ski and snowboard cross races, both the ski and snowboard slopestyle qualifying and finals and the ski halfpipe contests with the deepest coverage of the Games, said Billy Matthews, the network’s veteran Olympic producer.

The network is so fired up on the new disciplines – despite host Bob Costas’ ill-advised smarm toward slopestyle – that it will precede Friday’s opening ceremony with two hours of primetime, NBC coverage of men’s and women’s snowboard slopestyle qualifiers on Thursday.

“If you had said to someone 10 years ago that slopestyle would kick off the Olympics, they would have called you crazy,” Matthews said. “First time in the Olympics and it’s going to start the Olympics.”

Every athlete’s final run in the halfpipe will land on NBC primetime, Matthews said. Not the smaller cable partner networks like USA or Universal, but the big-stage NBC. The network is all-in for the high energy new events like slopestyle and ski halfpipe, Matthews said.

“They want all this stuff. It’s not just the demographic. They realize this is what the viewers want to see and it’s wall-to-wall primetime for the first 10 to 12 days of the Olympics. When in doubt, it will be primetime,” Matthews said. “There is a whole undercurrent of people 40 and under who are doing this who aren’t doing racing. There are more people snowboarding than do downhill or slalom. There’s a lot more appetite for it. A lot more people are doing these sports.”

U.S. Snowboarding’s leading slopestyle snowboarder Chas Guldemond practices last week at the Breckenridge Grand Prix, where a blizzard cancelled snowboard slopestyle and halfpipe events. The contests will be held this week at California’s Mammoth Mountain. (Photo by Ezra Shaw, Getty Images

U.S. halfpipe and slopestyle snowboarders have a huge week ahead of them. They will compete in three Olympic qualifying contests at California’s Mammoth Mountain over four days this weekend as they fight to make the Olympic teams.

Aspen 16-year-old Torin Yater-Wallace finished second in the FIS World Cup halfpipe contest Friday at Copper Mountain and later that day was named to the US Freesking halfpipe team.

On the day teenagers dominated the first ski halfpipe World Cup since the sport was tapped for Olympic status, Team USA unveiled the U.S. Freeskiing Team.

The first-ever American teams in slopestyle snowboarding and skiing as well as halfpipe skiing were on hand Friday at the U.S. Gran Prix at Copper for a formal announcement by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association.

Earlier this year the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association nominated the teams, shortly after the International Olympic Committee selected ski halfpipe and slopestyle for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

On Friday, the USSA confirmed 21 athlete to the U.S. Snowboarding halfpipe and slopestyle teams and 17 athletes to U.S. Freeskiing.

Nine athletes were named for the U.S. Freeskiing Halfpipe Pro Team, including X Games champions Jen Hudak and Simon Dumont.

Meyer will be covering his 12th Olympic Games in Rio this summer. He has covered five World Alpine Ski Championships and more than 100 World Cup ski events. He is a member of the Colorado Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame.

Jason Blevins covers tourism, mountain business, skiing and outdoor adventure sports for both the business and sports sections at The Denver Post, which he joined in 1997. He skis, pedals, paddles and occasionally boogies in the hills.

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About All Things Olympics

The All Things Olympics blog from The Denver Post covers the athletes, events and stories of the Olympic Games and Olympic sports, including the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia. Its writers — John Meyer, Jason Blevins and Mark Kiszla — will feature profiles, articles, analysis and personal reflection.